“Settle down, Jon,” he says. “Oprah, do you want to tell him, or should I.”

Oprah breaks a sweat, nods to John Irving. “You.”

“Okay, listen, Jon, you’re not going to hit Oprah. You don’t want to hit Oprah. No one wants that. Look over at her spot, just outside the cage. See the man?”

Franzen squints in the bright spotlights.

“Don’t let him see you look. That’s Steadman. Here’s the deal, we start the match and you two circle, tie up, I’ll break you apart and you keep moving. It shouldn’t take Steadman long to climb over the top and get in here to save his girlfriend. Right, Oprah?”

She nods, her teeth covered in a blood-red mouth guard.

Michael Buffer walks through the octagon door, taking the mic from Clinton on the way out. He and John Irving perform a duet, “LET’S get READEEEEEEEEEEEEEE to RUMBLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLE.”

All that’s left in the blinding lights are Oprah and Jonathan Franzen.

“Have you been practicing?” he asks.

“I talked to a few guys. Let’s circle toward Steadman. Push me up against the cage and knee me in the guts. I’ve been doing crunches so don’t worry.”

“I’m not hitting a woman.”

“You’re kneeing me. Listen, Franzen, if you want to get out of here with both ears intact, just do what I tell you. Let’s go Muay Thai.”

“What?”

“Knee me in the guts you pansy.”

She reaches down and pulls Franzen’s knee into her stomach and falls against the cage.

“Ugh, Steadman, he landed one right in the old uterus.”

“You bastard,” Steadman screams. He climbs over the top of the cage and drops to his feet in a fighting stance beside Oprah. “We’ll so this together, babe.”

Franzen backs up from the duo when Oprah turns on her boyfriend.

“Like we’ve done so much together, right honey?”

She lands an overhand right to the side of Steadman’s head. He staggers and falls.

Franzen drops his hands at the sight of Oprah delivering a flying knee to the laid-out Steadman’s chest, a clear death-blow to the heart.

“How much longer am I waiting on you? Not much,” she says.

John Irving moves in while Oprah lands a flurry of punches on the unconscious man. He pulls her off while she’s still swinging and pushes her toward Franzen.

Before she stops swinging, one of her punches drops Jonathan Franzen.

Oprah shakes her head as if waking from a dream, blinking, looking at the three men in the ring, at the medical team coming through the octagon door. She kneels by Franzen.

“Jonathan? Jonathan, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you. It was never supposed to be you. I know you’d never hit a woman, Jonathan. I’m sorry,” she says.

He opens his eyes and lifts his head enough so the crowd can see he’s okay. “One word, Oprah. Re-match. I’ve changed my mind.”